The AWEA team just met yesterday (and at WINDPOWER last week) on how to deal with this Spanish jobs study which won't die and the Alvarez guy is on E&E TV today again talking about it, http://www.eenews.net/tv/2009/05/13/. Attached is the series of events I have been tracking. Jack from the Business Council has been tracking as well so jump in with more info (Jack, we met on the spot so I didn't have a chance to get you over here!)

Attached are a variety of talking points that have been developed by either GWEC,the Spanish Wind Energy Association, or us, but we need to go further because this thing won't die. I am trying to reach out to CAP today to see what they can do to help (they put out a response article), but wanted to see if UCS has done anything already. Suzanne, this is what I wanted to chat today about.

Thoughts?

Liz

From: Kline, DavidSent: Friday, May 15,2009 7:01 AM

Econ Impacts team:

I spoke with Gian about developing a response to the Spanish study, including a review of what Avi Gopstein already put together. We agreed that your team should go ahead with it, estimated budget of $5K.

There's a short run need for a response to the Spanish study during the next 10 days to two weeks.(...)

From: Tegen, SuzanneSent: Friday, May 29, 2009 1:21 PM(...)Avi Gopstein has rebutted this study as well. And we are working with AWEA (who is working with UCS and others) to put out a response to this report, which is methodologically unsound, and states that renewable energy policy in Spain (and therefore in the U.S.) is a waste of money and actually costs jobs rather than creates jobs. The report directly addresses the Obama Administration's ideas and policies.(...)

From: Kline, DavidSent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 9:55 AM(...)There's more to say about why I offered to plug in at the beginning, but it would be better as a phone conversation than an email. I am extremely conservative about what I will put in emails. If you have a chance to talk for five minutes today-even though we're both crashing before being out - we can do that. But it's not urgent. We can take it up when I'm back on the 13th if you'll be here then.

The one more thing I'd add is that I bet this controversy is not going to go away. It would be useful to take a step back and think about what's important for us to say, rather than doing repeated one-off responses to each new salvo that comes in. You'd be the appropriate thought leader for the Lab on that question; I'm happy to be a sounding board if useful.

From: Arent, DougSent: Tuesday, September 22,200912:19 PM

Folks:There is considerable "traffic flow" on the origins of the Spanish Job report, stemming from congressional inquiries to EERE. We have had inquiries from EE-l and GFO to Exec mgmt here, and then multiple inquiries thru program offices.

We need to ensure consistent responses to ALL inquiries, and that message is as follows:

NREL conducted the review as part of its ongoing work to support EERE/SPA under David Rodgers in which NREL regularly reviews public information to provide credible, objective information relative to current information that has been published. The initial NREL review was provided for internal use only, and followed an internal memo drafted by Avi Goldstein. Post internal (EERE) communications of an NREL "publication" on this subject, NREL received numerous inquiries for an "NREL report"--from Megan and Jacques in particular and subsequently completed our review and published the white paper.(...)